State improves safety of bypass surgery

Lehigh Valley hospitals fare well, as death rate drops.

Take heart, Pennsylvania. The latest report on coronary artery bypass surgery shows that doctors are performing fewer operations and patients are faring better.

Despite a 9.2 percent drop in volume between 2000 and 2002, deaths from bypass surgery fell 16.6 percent, according to a report released this week by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council in Harrisburg. Readmission rates for the same two years dropped about 10 percent as well.

The results appeared to fly in the face of conventional wisdom that practice makes perfect in heart surgery. However, surgeons with higher caseloads saw more patients survive.

The council, an independent state agency also known as PHC4, took some credit.

"We believe the aspect of public reporting has contributed a great deal to the improvement in quality," spokesman Joe Martin said.

Martin cited a recent study that found death rates from bypass surgery dropping nationwide but more significantly in states that share the data with the public, competing hospitals and surgeons.

Heart surgeons and administrators attribute the good grades to experience, volume and collaboration on improved techniques.

"The nature of medicine is to make progress," said Dr. Terrill Theman, a heart surgeon at St. Luke's Hospital in Fountain Hill. "We learn more and apply our experience to these patients."

Theman and other local heart surgeons meet several times a year with surgeons in the Philadelphia area to compare data and share the best techniques in surgery, anesthesia and post-operative care.

Ron Swinfard, a dermatologist and chief medical officer at Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network, said the surgical team is equally important as the surgeons' experience.

"It's like an orchestra," he said. "Our skilled technicians also have done hundreds or thousands of procedures over the years. They run the pump,